After the day was over and he started for home, Dav Eccles looked out the window of his parents’ skimmer and wished he could still love what he saw.
Each day since he’d been the tiniest youngling, his parents had put him in the back seat of a covered skimmer and a droid driver had chauffeured him to and from school. Being the son of a Council member for any Quadrant or zone had its perks on the big planet of Coruscant, but for a Councillor’s child in the Senate district the life could be especially sweet.
Dav was seventeen orbits old, an adult by many standards. And yet looking out over the literally endless vista of buildings and spires that covered the surface of the planet and the over five-thousand levels beneath, Dav felt none of the resentment or angst that he had been told he might feel at this age. Coruscant was home to nearly three trillion sentient beings, and since the Clone Wars had ended five years ago traffic had only increased in the more pleasurable products like foodstuffs and game equipment.
But something lately had been...off somehow. Dav looked out the window again. For most of his life, Dav had looked at the skyline of buildings and felt a tiny thrill. No other planet had its entire surface covered by a city! Urban and industrial centers the size of continents, suburbs the size of countries on other worlds. How amazing was that?
But lately that thrill had been shrinking. More and more, when he looked at the skylines he’d felt a quiet sadness, a sense that there was more for him to see or do. The lines of thousands of aircars and speeder bikes in the various levels of the city looked less and less like teeming citizens off to do productive work, and more and more like lines of builder insects like those he’d seen in a holovid in school.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
His mind turned back to the talk he and Sportsmaster Tavin had had after the fight with Mons. “Dav,” the sportsmaster had said, “what’s your game?”
“Tae-Jitsu boxing,” Dav had answered. “You just saw.”
“No, Dav,” coach had said. “You have Slingball in your blood. Tae-Jitsu is just you trying to be your own slingball team.”
“Sportsmaster, I know my father was captain of his team when he was a student here...”
“And he was a decent captain of his team. Not the best, but decent. He’d have done better if he’d worked as hard to be a team captain as he did trying to be the team star. Dav, I see the way the other students look at you when you step on the floor. You get those exo gloves and a pair of shorts on, and almost no one can stop you. No one from this school, anyway. But if you put on a uniform for Slingball, with your talent for both the game and leadership? And if you learned to focus your ability to observe and make decisions under pressure? You could put your father’s records out to pasture in a single season. Guaranteed, Dav.”
“That’s alright, Sportsmaster. I like boxing with Tae-Jitsu, and I’m staying with it.”
“Fine. But remember, it’s not because Tae-Jitsu is truly your sport, little Eccles,” said the sportsmaster, looking up at him and poking him in the chest for emphasis. “It’s because you are lazy. You fell into this space of things, and now you like it here. But be forewarned: I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I think you’re supposed to be a leader. You should take any opportunity to grow as a leader that comes your way, at Slingball or something else. Otherwise, you’ll be unprepared when your time comes.”
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To be Continued...